Still above 0

Yet another crisp fall/winter morning. It’s a balmy 7 degees above zero, the sun’s on the way up, and it appears that the clouds have moved on. One nice thing about snow is I don’t have to look at my raggedy assed, uncut lawn until next May. The morning chores are about finished, just waiting on my Slowski Special of a coffeemaker to finish up. The woodstove’s been relit, Doggus Maximus has been fed and walked proving to her yet again that the neighbor’s house is still there. My dog is obsessed with my neighbor’s house for some unknown reason.

I’m going to do my best to keep my politics out of this, but I also give fair warning I may not succeed. I really don’t want to be thought of as just another conservative spouting off because Obama yada yada yada. But this whole cash for clunkers thing just spun me into a new dimension of piss off, to use Ron White’s apt turn of phrase. News is coming out that each of those cars cost you and I, the taxpaying public, just about 24 grand each. That’s bad enough but all the program managed to do is suck 2 years worth of new cars sales out of the market.

This is just one guy’s opinion, but I did spend a few years in the car sales business and saw this happen in 2005 when GM started their first employee pricing for everyone nightmare. Ford, Chrysler, and a few others jumped on the bandwagon and we all sold a buttload of new cars. Let me tell ya what happened next. We had a ton of used rigs on the lots, the new car sales numbers tanked for the next year. Guess what happened this time? The only difference is the trades are unsellable.

The guys on the ground in Afghanistan are telling the Commie in Chief what they need to do the job. I’m no historian but I’d be willing to bet Ivan was hollering at Moscow back in the 80’s as well and the boys back there didn’t follow through either. One thing I do know is things ended badly for the Soviets.

Did ya know the new defense budget signed by Dear Leader yesterday contains funding to pay the taliban to quit fighting? If I’m paying the guys not to beat me up or trash my business, that’s a protection racket, isn’t it?

Let me step off the soapbox now.

I’m off to do battle with the job market yet again. On the up side, I do have a couple interviews set up and the Yanks didn’t show up to play last night. It’d be really terrible if they went 2 down at home. I’m not holding my breath, but one can hope……